Mapping police fatal encounters

[Angry Floof]

Useful information. Not provided by police for the most part, of course. The database this is based on is a grass roots effort started years ago by journalist D. Brian Burghart and published on his site, fatalencounters.org.

Mapping fatal police violence across U.S. metropolitan areas: Overall rates and racial/ethnic inequities, 2013-2017

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm totally not getting the quintile breakdown here.

 

[blastula]

This page explains it better. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229686.g001

Fig 1
Estimated annual rates of fatal police violence per 100,000 residents, by MSA.

Estimated MSA-specific rates of fatal police violence per 100,000 residents per year are mapped. Quintiles are labeled in the legend along with, in parentheses, the range of estimated rates included in that quintile.

The number ranges in the quintiles are per capita rates of lethal violence.

They also have a map of ratio of violence on blacks to violence whites, which is curiously kind of the reverse of the above map.

Fig 2
Estimated Black-White incidence rate ratios (annual) for fatal police violence, by MSA.

Estimated MSA-specific incident rate ratios comparing rates of fatal police violence experienced by Black people relative to those experienced by White people are mapped. Quintiles are labeled in the legend along with, in parentheses, the range of IRR values included in that quintile.

Haven't read it deeply though.

 

[Angry Floof]

Also, fyi, what the database includes, from the fatalencounters.org site that serves as an access point to the database:

We try to document all deaths that happen when police are present or that are caused by police: on-duty, off-duty, criminal, line-of-duty, local, federal, intentional, accidental–all of them.

I don't know how or if the author filtered the data.

 

[ronburgundy]

This page explains it better. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229686.g001

Fig 1
Estimated annual rates of fatal police violence per 100,000 residents, by MSA.

Estimated MSA-specific rates of fatal police violence per 100,000 residents per year are mapped. Quintiles are labeled in the legend along with, in parentheses, the range of estimated rates included in that quintile.

The number ranges in the quintiles are per capita rates of lethal violence.

They also have a map of ratio of violence on blacks to violence whites, which is curiously kind of the reverse of the above map.

View attachment 28347

Fig 2
Estimated Black-White incidence rate ratios (annual) for fatal police violence, by MSA.

Estimated MSA-specific incident rate ratios comparing rates of fatal police violence experienced by Black people relative to those experienced by White people are mapped. Quintiles are labeled in the legend along with, in parentheses, the range of IRR values included in that quintile.

Haven't read it deeply though.

The problem with this second graph is that it is simply the # of black victims / # of white victims without conditionalizing each on the relative sizes of their populations. For example Chicago is 1/3 black, so it's ratio in this graph will inherently be larger than a city with a lower % of blacks.

This bar graph in this link (can't paste it directly) is at the state level, but it tells a different story. The states are ordered by the blue bars, which are per capita killings by police. Those data correspond pretty well to Figure 1 in the OP, and Illinois and NY are actually ranked down in the bottom 10 states. The Red bars are black people killed conditionalized on the #of blacks in each state. Thus the difference between the red and blue bars represents the racial difference conditionalized by the pop of each race in each state. IL is actually around 28th in per capita blacks killed and NY is 43rd or so (you need to do it by hand, no way to resort based on red bars). For the difference in bars, IL ain't great, but worse states are AK, NB, IA, WV, UT, and RI

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The first image shows that it's urban areas and that to a large degree the closer you are to drugs the more shootings. There's something about it that's worrysome, though--the data is supposed to be all police-involved deaths. The areas with high death rates also bear a substantial relationship with areas with road networks that allow going fast. How many of these are pursuit related? Shooting and traffic accidents need very different solutions, lumping them is bad data.

The second needs to be adjusted for the local demographics to be meaningful.

This doesn't look like very good research.

 

[Worldtraveller]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

According to WashPo, ~1,030 in a year. Then going to GIffords' site, about 12,000 gun HOMICIDES a year (GIffords' site also notes that only 500ish law enforcement gun killings?).

So when comparing gun related homicides to police enforcement deaths, it is about 11 to 1.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

That will just make the bad guys get away more often.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

Major distortion of the facts.

1) It's obviously looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths. Most gun deaths are suicide.

2) It's comparing gun homicides to police deaths even though a decent percentage of them aren't from guns.

 

[Angry Floof]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

Major distortion of the facts.

1) It's obviously looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths. Most gun deaths are suicide.

2) It's comparing gun homicides to police deaths even though a decent percentage of them aren't from guns.

What is "It"? What is looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths? Can you link your reference, please? Same with the second point. "It" meaning the research paper? The source database? Something else?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

Major distortion of the facts.

1) It's obviously looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths. Most gun deaths are suicide.

2) It's comparing gun homicides to police deaths even though a decent percentage of them aren't from guns.

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

Major distortion of the facts.

1) It's obviously looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths. Most gun deaths are suicide.

2) It's comparing gun homicides to police deaths even though a decent percentage of them aren't from guns.

What is "It"? What is looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths? Can you link your reference, please? Same with the second point. "It" meaning the research paper? The source database? Something else?

Your study, don't ask me for the link! I'm pointing out what needs to be done to the data to get that 1 in 10.

 

[blastula]

Above the Law: The Data Are In on Police, Killing, and Race - Public Discourse

Police violence in America is extraordinary in its intensity. It is disproportionate to the actual threats facing police officers, and it has risen significantly in recent years without apparent justification. Its effects are felt across all racial groups, with non-Hispanic whites making up half of all people killed by police officers, even as African Americans are killed at disproportionately high rates compared to any reasonable baseline.

 

[Angry Floof]

I need to see if I can find the link again, but I saw a study showing that in the US 1 in 10 gun deaths were the result of a police shooting. That's a pretty large number and indicates that disarming police (in general) may be a good way to start the reforms.

Major distortion of the facts.

1) It's obviously looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths. Most gun deaths are suicide.

2) It's comparing gun homicides to police deaths even though a decent percentage of them aren't from guns.

What is "It"? What is looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths? Can you link your reference, please? Same with the second point. "It" meaning the research paper? The source database? Something else?

Your study, don't ask me for the link! I'm pointing out what needs to be done to the data to get that 1 in 10.

The link I posted is a research paper that uses the fatalencounters.org database. The researchers did not build the database. They only used it in their analysis. So I take it you're talking about the researchers in their analysis?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Major distortion of the facts.

1) It's obviously looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths. Most gun deaths are suicide.

2) It's comparing gun homicides to police deaths even though a decent percentage of them aren't from guns.

What is "It"? What is looking at gun homicides, not gun deaths? Can you link your reference, please? Same with the second point. "It" meaning the research paper? The source database? Something else?

Your study, don't ask me for the link! I'm pointing out what needs to be done to the data to get that 1 in 10.

The link I posted is a research paper that uses the fatalencounters.org database. The researchers did not build the database. They only used it in their analysis. So I take it you're talking about the researchers in their analysis?

The problem is with the labeling. I don't know whose fault that was.

 

[ronburgundy]

The first image shows that it's urban areas and that to a large degree the closer you are to drugs the more shootings. .

??? While most rural areas aren't even included on that map, the dark blue areas with the lowest per capita killings by cops include the most densely populated cities of Chicago, NYC, Boston, Detroit, and Philly. Meanwhile the most per capita cop killing areas are appropriately in red b/c they are overwhelmingly in Republican controlled states in the south, midwest and Great plains. Note that while CA has lots of red, they are almost all in the rural eastern parts that are heavily conservative and not on the more Democrat friendly coast. Political party control is huge predictor of cop's using lethal violence according to that graph, so much so that it overrides population density and the higher crime rates that go with it.